Municipal refuse is often placed in plastic garbage bags for disposal. Such bags are often used by consumers who find the use of garbage cans undesirable. Garbage cans are often insufficiently well sealed to prevent odors arising from the trash from becoming objectionable. Trash cans often become soiled and are thus a continuous source of noxious odors. Further, residuals attached to garbage cans can be a source of attraction of insects such as ants. For many businesses, trash bags cut down on the labor necessary in handling the trash, particularly in the need to retrieve, clean, and store trash cans after the trash contained therein has been collected. Empty trash cans have the potential to be blown about by high winds when empty. When full, trash cans can be tipped over, releasing garbage and trash to cause litter and require considerable employee time to clean up.
In some circumstances, municipal plans for recycling require that certain types of recyclable material, such as aluminum cans, plastic bottles and glass bottles, be placed in clear plastic bags for identification and collection.
Because the premature breaking of a garbage bag is highly undesirable, resulting in the complete failure of the bag's intended purpose, garbage bags are designed to resist punctures and when punctured, to resist tearing so that a sharp item contained within a trash bag, while puncturing the bag, does not result in the release of the bag's contents.
This property of trash bags to resist tearing was not a problem when municipal trash was simply landfilled. However, with increasing desirability and requirements for recycling, opening the trash bags is often necessary so that their contents may be separated for recycling.
In the past, bag openers have been designed to handle industrial commodities which are normally shipped in bags. Cement, sand, and clay for example are often sold and shipped in bags. Bag openers designed for industrial commodities typically hit or shear the bags, which are not as tear-resistant as municipal trash bags. Because the commodity-like cement or sand is not easily damaged by breaking or further comminution, the design of bag openers for industrial commodities may employ techniques that are unsuitable for opening municipal garbage bags. In opening municipal garbage bags, it is desirable to avoid breaking the contents of the bag into smaller pieces as that further complicates separating the garbage into its various constituents.
Trash bags vary in size from large bags of more than 30 gallons size to small bags such as those used to line wastebaskets. The smaller bags may go through a conventional bag breaker without being opened.
Another problem with some bag breaking apparatuses is that the tines that break the bags can become excessively entangled with empty plastic bags. The plastic bags also represent a bulky source of plastic that can be difficult and expensive to remove from the trash stream.
What is needed is a bag breaker that can reliably open bags of all sizes and has means for separating plastic bags from the trash.